The political science of salmon non-recovery,
101

If the 13 endangered salmon
runs on the Columbia and Snake rivers go the way of the dodo on our
watch, the responsibility for this denouement cannot be laid at the
feet of the five Columbia River Indian tribes or their allies in
the biological and aquatic sciences.

For two decades, in
courtrooms and at hatcheries, tribal councils and marine biologists
have waged a tireless battle against an unmovable foe: time. Their
chief institutional adversary has been the Bonneville Power
Administration, a semi-autonomous federal agency that distributes
energy generated by a gantlet of fish-killing hydroelectric dams in
the Columbia River Basin, a geographic area the size of France.

When billions of federal salmon recovery dollars flowed
into Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Montana and Wyoming in the 1990s,
politicians such as Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash., and Sen. Gordon
Smith, R-Ore., rushed to protect industries whose profits are
subsidized by cheap transportation, cheap electricity and free
water. Overnight, the icon of the Pacific Northwest morphed from an
ocean-going fish into a political football with gills and fins.

Attempts to reconcile the irreconcilable interests of
science and politics in the federal government’s salmon
recovery plans of 1995 and 2000 relied heavily on "the best
available science." Yet, 10 years later, the barges still haul
salmon to the sea, a handful of industrial farms still irrigate at
taxpayer expense, and the extinction trajectories for Columbia
River salmon are right on schedule: 2017.

Now, responding
to a 2003 court order to fish or cut bait, NOAA Fisheries has
unveiled yet another recovery blueprint. Regrettably, this draft
biological opinion nudges aquatic biology one step closer to
complete irrelevance while winding the spring on the extinction
clock tighter.

"We’ve known all along that the Bush
administration was determined to politicize science," says Charles
Hudson, spokesman for the Columbia River Tribal Fish Commission.
"We never imagined they’d be this brazen."

NOAA
Fisheries, for examples, says all it needs to do is to keep salmon
from declining any faster than they already are. As Brian Gorman, a
spokesman for NOAA Fisheries, put it, "The Endangered Species Act
does not mandate recovery; it mandates a recovery plan."

Up to now, the purpose of a recovery plan for endangered species
was to establish a biological baseline as a benchmark for recovery
strategies. In addition to including 10,000 years of native fishing
as an integral feature of that baseline, earlier versions of the
plan identified hydroelectric dams as "impacts" to salmon’s
natural habitat.

The Bush administration never cared for
the political consequences of that assessment. The 2004 Salmon
Recovery Plan simply declares that the dams pose "no jeopardy" to
salmon, as if they have been natural features of the river
environment since the last Ice Age. Conversely, native fishing on
these rivers is now listed as an "impact."

"This thing
doesn't even meet the straight-face test," says Rob Masonis,
regional director for the national nonprofit group American Rivers.
"What will they say next, that the future of the passenger pigeon
looks bright?"

Officials at NOAA Fisheries, who wrote the
plan, argue that advancements in the design of removable weirs have
made dams more fish-friendly by directing them away from intakes
that flush fish through turbines. Conservationists counter that the
limited data gathered on these newfangled contraptions tell a
different story. Costing tens of millions of dollars, the new weirs
have increased fish counts at spawning grounds by less than 1
percent — in good years.

At a hearing in federal
court in Portland, Ore., Sept. 28, U.S. District Court Judge James
Redden issued a warning to the Bush administration. Addressing a
crowded courtroom, the judge predicted that the federal
government’s new recovery plan was headed for "a train
wreck."

So, in the coming months, as the extinction clock
continues ticking, and as we reach into our pockets to pony up
another $10 million to separate politics from science in yet
another salmon recovery plan, we might recall Mark Twain’s
verdict on politicians: If they started out dead, we’d all be
better off, because they'd begin being honest that much sooner.

Paul VanDevelder is a contributor to Writers on
the Range, a service of High Country News
(hcn.org). He lives in Corvallis, Oregon, and is the author of the
new book, Coyote Warrior, a six-generation
chronicle of a Mandan-Hidatsa family.

Note: the opinions expressed in this column are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of High Country News, its board or staff. If you'd like to share an opinion piece of your own, please write Betsy Marston at betsym@hcn.org.